


The Leaves’ Grip and Shine

by dee_lirious



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Constipated Jedi Emotions, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Jedi Lineages (Star Wars), Obi-Wan can have a little emotional closure; as a treat, Plants as a Metaphor, Self-Indulgent, and a Little Miscommunication Because Otherwise This Wouldn't Be in Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29943282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dee_lirious/pseuds/dee_lirious
Summary: “Seriously, Master? Where am I gonna keep a plant? We’re barely even on the planet these days.”Obi-wan’s expression shutters. “Of course. It was just a thought, Anakin.”-There’s a tradition for new Knights. True to form, Anakin reinterprets it.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 16
Kudos: 124





	The Leaves’ Grip and Shine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shecrows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shecrows/gifts).



> This quite literally came to me in a dream - my husband woke up at 7:30 am on Sunday to the image of me typing frantically into my phone with my eyes closed as if I was possessed. (And then I spent a day and a half trying to remember how the English language works so that I could finish it lmao)
> 
> Title from “What Is There Beyond Knowing” by Mary Oliver. (I almost titled it after Ben Platt’s “Grow As We Go,” bc I’m corny as hell.)
> 
> I'm dedicating this one to leighway/shecrows in commiseration for also Going Through It Right Now. Sometimes we pass each other like ships in the night who like to honk their clown horns about Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn et al., and I think that’s beautiful.

There’s a tradition for new Knights.

The Jedi are contradictory, Anakin has discovered—all this culture, all this tradition, and yet they rarely stand on ceremony. The Knighting itself is about the intention, rather than the trappings: a braid cut or beads removed is the sole prop required. Any other ritual is at the discretion of the new Knight and their former master.

It’s an antiquated one, not one of the fun ones—which tend to involve a lot of alcohol and probably unwise use of training lightsabers—and thus uncommon, only carried on by a handful of master-apprentice lineages.

When Obi-Wan brings it up after breakfast, Anakin almost laughs.

“Seriously, Master?” he says, incredulous. “Where am I gonna keep a plant? We’re barely even on the planet these days.” There’s a war on, after all. Who has time to pick out a plant; a vessel—let alone tend to it?

Obi-wan’s expression shutters. Something lost flickers over his face, over the steady line of his shoulders, before he settles back into his usual placid reserve.

“Of course. It was just a thought, Anakin.” 

He goes back to lacing up his boots, latching up his vambraces, gathering up his stack of datapads and finishing the last of his morning cup of tea. 

“I have to bring these to the Council,” Obi-Wan says, though he’d already said so earlier. He doesn’t quite meet Anakin’s eyes.

On his way out, he glances abortedly to the small window in their sitting room—the only window in their apartments, but a real one: a luxury, given how few quarters have them. There’s a little plant tucked in amongst the books and pads, a common trailing thing that’s been here ever since Anakin could remember, potted in a blue-glazed ceramic teapot, slightly chipped on one side. 

—

Obi-Wan had done the traditional potting alone, after Naboo—his braid in one hand with no one to offer it to; Qui-Gon’s saber in the other. Eyes red-rimmed but dry, feeling uneven but curiously numb.

The pot had been a gift—part of a loosely matched set from a planet whose name Obi-Wan cannot remember; a mission that his master had gone on without him because it had been boring and he’d needed to stay at the temple for a round of exams. He’d been sixteen and had pouted to be left out, but had obediently studied for his classes, logged his requisite hours in the training salle, roughhoused with his friends around the Temple, and then retired to their empty apartment every evening for two and a half standard weeks while his master had been off-world.

Qui-Gon had returned with a dull story of a successful treaty mediation and the tea set, which he had presented to Obi-Wan with little fanfare. 

“It reminded me of you,” he’d said simply, the suggestion of a smile on his face. “Let’s try not to break this one, hm?”

“You broke the last one, as I recall,” Obi-Wan had said, but he’d smiled back, a little pink around the edges with pleasure because his master had thought of him while he’d been gone—and hadn’t, as Obi-Wan had still sometimes silently feared, realized that it’d been a mistake to take him as an apprentice after all.

Over the years, the cups had indeed been broken, lost to elbows flung wide and, in one extraordinary case, used as a projectile weapon as a last resort. But the pot had remained intact—though a little dusty from lack of use, when all its matching cups had been lost.

In the cold wake of his unexpected Knighting, after little Anakin had been settled into bed, Obi-Wan dutifully gathered up the remains of his former master’s belongings and packed them up for the quartermasters. He kept only a few things, aside from shared household utilities: an old cloak, ragged around the edges, with a notable blasterhole through one sleeve, which Obi-wan had last used as an extra blanket. A few flimsi books that had been Qui-Gon’s favorites, with his little scrunched up notes in the margins. A small pile of hair ties, which his master had constantly been losing and replacing. The lightsaber, now tucked away into a small box in Obi-Wan’s dresser. 

And, from his impressive collection of plants, he’d carefully unpotted the trailing vine—a hardy species, native to a jungle planet. It was verdant, adaptable and unfussy, with smooth, heart-shaped leaves. Over the years, he’d watched Qui-Gon prune and water it; had watched as it grew too big and had to be parceled out into smaller plants, many of them given away to unwitting friends and neighbors. 

Obi-wan had placed it into his teapot, eyes still dry, and smoothed the dirt down around it. It was a bit strange in the new vessel—the grey-blue clashed against the glossy chartreuse leaves, not as pleasing to the eye as its previous beige clay pot had been. 

In the silence of the kitchen that was now his—his and Anakin’s—Obi-Wan had rubbed a smooth leaf between his thumb and forefinger, and swallowed back a sob. If he’d started it would be a long time before he could stop, and he’d had a Padawan to think of, now.

—

Anakin knows, after Obi-Wan leaves, that he’d said the wrong thing. Too late, the regret swoops low through him, followed quickly by frustration. 

True to form, his master—former master—has left his disappointment lingering in the air in his wake, where Anakin can’t reach, even to swat away. Never voicing his true thoughts; hiding them behind polite asides which nevertheless stick like barbs, pricking just enough that they cannot be ignored.

What’s the big deal? It’s just a plant. At most, it’s another overblown metaphor—your braid represents your growth as a Jedi, your breath is a ritual and path to meditation, your weapon is your life. 

A plant, chosen and gifted, is… 

Whatever, Anakin thinks with a huff and flops onto the sofa, his belt and laces still undone, abandoned with the remnants of his breakfast. 

It’s not required. Obi-Wan had said it was just an idea, right?

Right?

_ “Kriff,” _ Anakin groans aloud.

— 

When Anakin bangs his way into their quarters that evening, Obi-Wan startles so badly that he drops the reports he’d been reading, his hand halfway to igniting his lightsaber.

_ “Force, _ Anakin!” he exclaims, bending to check that he hasn’t cracked the datapad’s screen. “What in the world is the matter? Where have you been all day?”

“Uh,” Anakin says, shifting from one foot to the other. He’s stopped abruptly in the entryway as if he’d speed-walked right up into the door, cradling an open-topped canvas bag in the crook of his arm.

Belatedly, Obi-Wan feels a pang of guilt—Anakin is no longer his Padawan, and can go and do as he pleases without his former master trying to peer over his shoulder.

“Do you know what you’d like for dinner?” Obi-Wan asks instead, turning toward the kitchen, “I believe we still have some fresh ingredients to use up before our deployment—”

“I got you a thing,” Anakin interrupts, brusque and over-loud. When Obi-Wan looks up, he has a constipated expression on his face, embarrassed but defiant, the way he’d often looked as a child when he’d stretched some rule or knowingly wandered too far out of Obi-Wan’s view. 

“A  _ thing,” _ Obi-Wan repeats carefully, turning the word over in his mouth as if it will reveal some hidden meaning. “Is it a legal thing?”

In response he receives an exaggerated eye roll, but also a loosening of the strange tension across Anakin’s shoulders.  _ “One time  _ I bring back an invasive species, and you won’t let me forget it.”

“You put a  _ rat _ in your  _ pants _ and nearly started an intergalactic incident. I had to testify to the  _ Senate _ that the Jedi were not purposefully violating the Republic’s environmental regulations.” 

Anakin frowns. “I don’t remember that part.”

“You were eleven,” Obi-Wan says dryly. “It was past your bedtime.”

He watches as Anakin sets his parcel on the low table in their sitting room and fiddles with the edge of the bag, folding it over slightly so that Obi-Wan can’t glimpse inside. “Assure me that you don’t have another live organism, please.”

“Well,” Anakin hedges with a smirk, “I  _ do _ remember you saying that you didn’t want me to lie to you, when I was scared to tell you about the rat.”

“Anakin—”

The mirth drops from his face, replaced with that same scowling nervousness as Anakin says, “I picked out a plant.”

Obi-Wan furrows his brow, uncomprehending for a moment, before the conversation from the morning rushes back—followed by a pang.  _ But  _ I  _ was supposed to pick out a plant, _ he thinks. Or rather, he silently corrects: Anakin had said that he didn’t want a plant at all. 

Perhaps he simply hadn’t wanted whatever Obi-Wan would’ve chosen.

He muffles the thought quickly. “Ah,” he says, instead.

Anakin’s expression falls at his lackluster response. Obi-Wan feels a flare of  _ annoyance-embarrassment-hurt  _ in the Force around them. “You don’t have to keep it, if you don’t want it,” his former padawan says, which makes no sense.

Obi-Wan grasps at the conversation, wrong-footed. “Me? But—the plant is a gift for the newly Knighted—for you—to represent the culmination of your lessons, and the cultivation of continued learning—”

Anakin  _ tsks _ , makes an impatient gesture as if batting the lecture aside. “It’s—hang on, that’s why I picked it—” He pulls a potted plant from the bag.

Obi-Wan’s first impression is that it looks...nice. Aesthetically pleasing, he supposes, as far as houseplants go. Two ruddy stalks rise upwards out of the soil, thick and sturdy enough not to bend under their own weight. Its pale leaves have an attractive variegated pattern, as if the center of each has been hand-painted with a darker green.

“It’s a—uh, actually, I forgot the scientific name,” Anakin says in a rush. “The Garden Master called it a duo plant. They grow in paired stalks. Once they’re mature, like this one, you can separate them.” Reaching into the bag again, he pulls out a pair of slightly smaller empty pots. “I thought… Qui-Gon didn’t get to give you one, not really. So. One for each of us.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t know what to say. It’s not the first time that he’s been caught off-guard by the depth of Anakin’s thoughtfulness, but the swell of emotion is still strong enough to drain all the noise from his head, his morning’s melancholic reminiscing knocked loose.

After a long moment of grappling with the words, he manages: “It's—that’s a lovely idea, Anakin.”

“Really?” Anakin doesn’t look convinced. 

Obi-Wan hopes that the smile on his face is reassuring, and does not wobble too severely. “Yes, Padawan.”

The title, though no longer accurate, seems to soften the space between them. Obi-Wan allows himself to reach out, to place a hand on Anakin’s shoulder and squeeze, once, memorizing anew the curve of Anakin’s pleased smile. As one, they turn their attention back to the plant.

“Is there, like, something we should…say?” Anakin asks, taking a seat on the floor.

“I’m afraid I don’t know how this goes, firsthand,” Obi-Wan admits as he joins him. “As you said, I didn’t have the opportunity with my own master.” Yoda had been the one to mention it, after Anakin’s braid had been cut. It had been a bittersweet reminder that the connecting links in the lineage between himself and his great-Grandmaster were no longer available for consultation on such matters.

“I guess, just, we’ll take it out and...put them into the new pots, right?”

“Yes, I imagine that’s the idea,” Obi-Wan says.

They take the plant out of the pot, and lay it in front of them on the low table, spilling dirt in a messy pile as Anakin shakes it loose.

He prepares to separate them, and Obi-Wan stops him. “Wait a moment, Anakin.” A jangle of anxiety shakes around in the space between his ribs.

“What?”

He stares down at the tangled roots, unable to discern where to make the delineation. It seems a shame to try to tease them apart, and no doubt tear and break many of them in the process. Obi-Wan jumbles the thought around, worrying at it, before he wonders aloud: “...Do they have to be separated?” 

Anakin doesn’t respond for long enough that Obi-Wan glances up. His bright blue eyes are intent on Obi-Wan’s face, as if trying to read his thoughts like words on a page. 

“No,” Anakin says, after a substantial pause. “The Garden Master said that it could thrive like this, indefinitely.”

Obi-Wan considers this. “One moment.”

He goes to his room, and returns with a child-sized helmet, its colors dulled and scuffed around the edges.

Obi-Wan forces his jaw to unclench. He watches as Anakin blinks at it, uncomprehending, before it dawns in a sequence across his face: recognition, shock, followed by something vulnerable. 

“You kept my podracing helmet,” he says on an exhale, disbelieving. 

Obi-Wan fights not to squirm away from the raw, piercing stare, and turns the helmet over in his hands. 

“It seemed...a good souvenir,” he says, bitingly aware of how thin an explanation it is. That he’d quietly kept this artifact tucked into the bottom of his trunk for ten years practically screams of sentiment; of a flavor of blatant nostalgia that a proper Jedi Master should frown upon. 

He’d tried, many times over the years, to clear out such physical reminders of the past, and had been largely unsuccessful. He still has Qui-Gon’s cloak and books and hair ties, discreetly tucked away but unforgotten. A Mon Calamari recipe handwritten on flimsi from Bant. A shot glass with a rude slogan printed on it from Quinlan. A crystalline rock from Siri. A dried, pressed Mandalorian lily from Satine. His own Padawan braid, coiled protectively around his master’s lightsaber, as close as it can be to the kyber within without touching.

Countless bits and bobs of Anakin’s, collected over a decade: a frayed, child-sized belt. The discarded casing of a small cleaning droid, when his padawan had gone through a phase of improving upon common utility droids and giving them funny nicknames. A stack of doodles and drawings and incomprehensible blueprints. A handmade card, featuring a truly egregious caricature of Obi-Wan himself, when Anakin had been trying to convince his master that he was ready, at age twelve and a half with a freshly-built lightsaber in hand, to join the more dangerous missions.

“I know it’s unorthodox,” Obi-Wan says carefully, setting the helmet upside-down on their table, “but it seems a fitting second life for it, hm?”

“Master…” Anakin starts, an unformed question on his face that Obi-Wan doesn’t know how to answer. “Yeah,” he seems to decide, after a moment, “Yeah, I like it.”

A moment of recognition is exchanged in the intangible space between them, in the master-padawan bond that isn’t as dissolved as it should be.

Obi-Wan helps Anakin repot the plant into its new home, holding the twin stalks steady as Anakin shovels soil around the base with his hands. Together, they pat it down, making sure that it won’t topple.

It looks, frankly, strange. The helmet is a little too wide and the rounded crest doesn’t exactly sit flat. Still, the sight triggers something warm in his chest.

Obi-Wan runs a fingertip over one of its smooth, rounded leaves. He picks it up, and carries it to the window. Sets it next to Qui-Gon’s vine, where he props the helmet steady with a stack of books.

He feels Anakin follow and stand next to him, subtly nudging their shoulders together. Obi-Wan presses back, and clears his throat. “You know, we’ll have to ship out again soon—the Council will be sending our battalions to Felucia any day now. And it’s supposedly bad luck to leave a Knighting plant unattended.”

Anakin hums, unconcerned, his satisfaction bleeding into the room. “Then it's a good thing we left them together, huh?” 

The smirk on his face is confident, warm, and genuine—and Obi-Wan doesn’t have the urge to chide his arrogance. He shares the feeling.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan murmurs. “I suppose it is.”

**Author's Note:**

> Some headcanons that no one asked for, because I’m fully on my bullshit and also I love houseplants:
> 
> Yoda gave Dooku a squat little plant, something exotic and ceremonial but plain—probably similar to a [lithops](https://worldofsucculents.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Lithops-verruculosa-Living-Stones3.jpg) succulent. A plant that doesn’t require much care to begin with; and one Dooku no doubt left largely unattended and then abandoned altogether when he left the Order.
> 
> Dooku gave Qui-Gon a fussy [orchid](https://www.merrifieldgardencenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Colorful-Orchid-1067x674.jpg)-like plant, which he dutifully tended for several years, before eventually transplanting into the Temple’s gardens where it would better thrive under someone else’s care.
> 
> Qui-Gon’s plant that Obi-Wan kept is a [neon pothos](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2570/3692/products/APC_1643_1024x1024@2x.jpg?v=1574801998): bright, bright green and generous when given ample light.
> 
> The plant Anakin chooses is of my own invention, but looks like a [peperomia obtusifolia](https://nestreeo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Peperomia-obtusifolia-Variegata-2-600x600.jpg) in my head. Strong, upright, leans towards the sun.
> 
> Maybe, if this is a universe with a nice ending, Anakin will get to pick out a plant with Ahsoka—something like a [sansevieria](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0013/3529/6118/products/Stripes-4_Sansevieria-Zeylanica-4.jpg?v=1544499843): a desert plant, strong and independent, with stripes to match hers.
> 
> -
> 
> you can find me and [a link to this fic](https://dee-lirious.tumblr.com/post/645200059912290304/the-leaves-grip-and-shine-deelirious-star) on [tumblr.](https://dee-lirious.tumblr.com/)


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